This page was created by Alison Morgan.
Article Summary by Carmelle W.
Steinwand uses a few examples of eco-critics to sustain his view that it is important to focus on environmental justice issues even through modern-day lenses. One modern ecocritic that Steinwand uses is Rob Nixon, who talks about the violence associated with climate change in our current ecological situation. Nixon writes specifically about the difference between slow and immediate violence that categorize the different ways that climate change impacts people and the earth. The slow violence that occurs has been the degradation of our environment over time but that isn’t necessarily visible with day to day changes. There is a challenge currently associated with climate change in engaging people to be more aware of the climate change issues surrounding our earth in long-term point of views rather than what we see on the front page of a newspaper. Slow versus immediate violence are concepts just now starting to change; it is hard to rally people about slow violence such as climate change, but much easier to gain traction using immediate violence such as ecoterrorism. Teaching environmental justice through poetry gives students pause to think of the moment in time that the poem was written, and how it still relates to them today. The class that Steinwand teaches focuses on the context in which the poem was written, rather than the content of the poem. Anne Carson is another ecocritic that Steinwand uses as an example for her work involving poetry and climate change. She takes a religious approach to her poems, and appeals to a more faith-based audience in her work God’s Justice. Steinwand notes that some ecocritical poetry can seem angry at the lack of speed that climate change recognition is moving, but it is not always that way. God’s Justice is ecocritical in a passive aggressive way, but is mostly critiquing the lack of justice in the way we as humans handle our ecological affairs. The metaphor about God suggests that humans are playing “God” and failing. This is a roundabout way to criticize the way that the Earth is currently being run.
An interesting point that Steinwand mentions in his article is the continuation of environmental learning by his students after the class is over. What is most important, is that the students learn about environmental justice issues, and continue to pursue issues relating to the environment after Steinwand’s class is over. The most rewarding part of this article for me is him acknowledging that his students often go on to pursue activities relating to ecocritical concepts explored in his class. Not only were they involved in the class, but decided to be involved with these issues on a deeper level. Although Steinwand doesn’t address the urgency of climate change in his article, he encourages his students to read poetry and other literature with a sense of purpose. Ecocentric poetry influences readers to think about the environment in a certain way, whether it be with anger or love, but authors manipulate readers to think in a certain way because of the necessity of the change of thought to how we live. Steinwand realizes that poetry is just one of many avenues that people can take to come to the reality of climate change, and does a good job encouraging his students to find the deeper meaning and context of environmentalism and ecocriticism in poetic forms of literature.
Steinwand, Jonathan. "Teaching Environmental Justice Poetry In The Anthropocene."Journal Of Commonwealth And Postcolonial Studies 2.2 (2014): 47-60. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
